On 13 May 2025, the UIC Smart communication For Efficient Rail Activities (SFERA) Working Group held a new edition of its workshop at the UIC Headquarters in Paris, with participants also joining online. The event brought together stakeholders from across Europe involved in Driver Advisory Systems (DAS), European Digital Instructions (DI), and Free Text Communication (FTC), highlighting the ongoing developments towards a broader scope of cooperation and greater interoperability, driven by the proposed UIC SFERA harmonised protocol for data exchange.

Since the previous session in December 2023, the SFERA Working Group has made significant progress. The protocol, initially focused on C-DAS, is now being expanded to include DI and FTC, supporting a unified approach to data exchange for railway operations.

The workshop began with a warm welcome by Lucie Anderton, UIC Head of Sustainability, and Philippe Stefanos, UIC Sustainability Advisor, followed by an update on the SFERA project by UIC’s Daniele Arena and a presentation of current developments by Sébastien Dislaire from SNCF Réseau.

The technical part of the session featured key contributions from Guy Seghers from Infrabel, who provided insights on XSLT transformations, as well as Alain Wenmaekers, also from Infrabel, who introduced the use of an ontology for SFERA to support semantic interoperability and consistent communication.

The workshop also highlighted implementation examples and national use cases:

• Christian Zimmer, Luxembourg National Railway Company (CFL), shared experiences and the lessons learned from the rollout of a DAS system in the country.
• Daniel Minder and Peter Hirzel, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) explained how the SFERA interface is being integrated into Swiss operations.
• Simon Eggler, Infrabel, presented two different C-DAS-C approaches: one via the Infrabel app, and the other through a railway undertaking proxy.
• Mohammad Sabbaghian, Cubris, discussed the impact of timing point tolerances on operations.

Another key focus was the ongoing development of DI across Europe, with several SFERA members presenting their respective DI projects: Bjorn Norwig, DB InfraGo; Tijs Van Eeckhoutte, Infrabel; Daniel Friedl, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB); Patrick Kottman, ProRail, and Aurélien Cametti, SNCF Réseau. Each presented their ongoing work and technical approaches, highlighting the potential of Digital Instructions to improve punctuality, safety and cross-border interoperability.

The workshop concluded with a poster fair and demo session, offering participants the opportunity to interact directly with project leaders, test tools under development, and network with infrastructure managers, undertakings, and developers.

For more information about the project, please get in touch with the UIC SFERA project managers at sfera at uic.org. You can also register for the User Group by sending an email, or at IRS 90940: SFERA - Change requests and SFERA User Group

The workshop material is now available for download at https://uic.org/events/uic-sfera-protocol-train-operation-data-exchange-workshop.